Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Another month has passed and another temperature record for the planet was set.

Results published on the NASA database yesterday indicated July 2016 was the 10th month in a row to break monthly temperature records, a measure obtained by combining sea-surface temperatures and air temperatures on land.

David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne, told The Guardian this latest data means 2016 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year on record. [Read more…]

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It ain’t over ‘till it’s over. But it’s mostly over in San Diego. Most of the ballots for the June 2016 primary election have been tallied. The remaining 285,000 ballots uncounted as of Wednesday morning are provisional and late arriving mail-in ballots. A few close races may change, but if history is any guide, what you see in the way of results the day after the election is what you get.

A multi-year campaign for an increase in the local minimum wage came to a close as voters overwhelmingly approved City Proposition I. For me personally, and for tens of thousands of San Diego workers, the last item on the ballot was the most important one.

Kevin Faulconer will be San Diego’s Mayor for the next four years, Barbara Bry did well in City Council District One, Mara Elliot defied conventional wisdom by clinching a runoff spot in the race for City Attorney, and Democrats gave Hillary Clinton a strong show of support, locally and statewide. [Read more…]

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Freedom of the Press Doesn’t Mean You’ll Like What Gets Said

On Monday afternoon, the Associated Press concluded, based on their research, that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Other media outlets quickly followed with similar stories.

She’ll be referred to as the “presumptive nominee” henceforth, and this conclusion has some Bernie Sanders supporters seeing red.

No, this isn’t about some evil conspiracy to suppress voter turnout. No, the press shouldn’t have waited on the story until June 8th… Or June 15th…or until after the convention. Some want to protest the coverage. [Read more…]

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Some Good Things Progressives Can Do Down Ballot

While most of the attention is on the Presidential race this primary season, there are still some important things progressive voters can weigh in on down ballot here in San Diego on June 7th that will do some good. [Read more…]

Is it true that San Diego Police overreacted during the anti-Trump protests in downtown last Friday, May 27th, or did they simply follow Chief Zimmerman’s plan to corral demonstrators and push them into Barrio Logan where they could make arrests – arrests made out of the lens of the national media?

I attended the protests and was downtown for about 6 hours that day a week ago. The following observations and opinions are my own. What I did see and experience has led me to believe that the police manipulated the anti-Trump protesters in order to declare an illegal assembly – which then gave them the authority to make mass arrests – arrests police made largely out of sight – and in the ethnic Chicano- Mexican-American community of Barrio Logan.[Read more…]

UPDATED: Bernie Sanders in San Diego on Sunday.

If you haven’t voted in San Diego yet, now is the time to get focused, and I’m here to help.

While there are many candidates and issues on the ballot, let me remind readers that a Yes vote on Proposition I will have the most immediate impact locally. More than 170,000 hard-working San Diegans will get a badly needed, overdue raise and access to five earned sick days a year.

What I hope to do here today is offer one-stop shopping for those of you just getting around to making your ballot box decisions. [Read more…]

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Sanders Voters Scarce So Far

With the deadline for primary voting less than a week away, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to San Diego to talk foreign policy.

This talk wasn’t about what she would do as President. It was all about The Donald, who–as far as I can tell– mostly formulates his ideas by playing upon fear or flight fantasies based on too much TV drama.

Who knows what Trump believes? And that may well be the scariest part of his persona. We do know that he seems incapable of moderating his passions in the face of a perceived threat, like a reporter asking a tough question. He’s also apparently never been wrong. About anything.[Read more…]

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Despite pressure from party establishment on Sanders to drop out of the race, most Democratic voters want the senator to keep running

By Nika Knight / CommonDreams

A new poll released Wednesday found that a majority of registered Democrats want presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to stay in the race.

The national survey of 2,001 voters by Morning Consult found that 57 percent of all Democrats polled want Sanders to keep running, while 33 percent want him to drop out. Ten percent have no opinion.

The findings contradict the pressure from prominent Democratic politicians and centrist pundits on Sanders to drop out of the presidential race—some of whom even argue that he’s already lost—despite the fact that several states (including delegate-rich California) and U.S. territories have yet to hold their primaries. (Polls also show Sanders and Clinton in a dead heat in California, which votes on June 7.) [Read more…]

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With less than a week left before the June 7th California Primary elections, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Community activists in San Diego called out the Faulconer administration’s willingness to use a shotgun to kill a fly following a massive show of force ending in the Barrio Logan neighborhood.

The Trump campaign has begun its formal descent into the netherworld with an endorsement by North Korea, a full-on attack on the media and revelations about the real estate education scam run by the Donald.

And the ugly side of social and faux media is manifesting itself in ways unimaginable just a few years back… [Read more…]

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San Diego’s Chicano Park was the gathering point for at least 800 people who participated in a politically militant and well organized action to unwelcome the anti-Arab, anti-Black, anti-Mexican, anti-Woman, power-hungry, neo-fascist oligarch Donald Trump. The event took place on Friday May 27, 2016, and represented dozens of organizations, cultural groups, MEChAs, local businesses, artists, barrio youth, families, elderly people, activists, and allies from diverse communities.

Participants repeated slogans like ¡Trump Fascista – Tu Eres Terrorista! and ¡Luchar, Luchar – Luchar Contra Trump! throughout the event, which began with a short rally in the park and moved on to become a march down Cesar Chavez Parkway and Harbor Drive, right up to the main entrance of the San Diego Convention Center. Unión del Barrio member Maria Rodriguez remarked “The best moment of the day was when the Chicano Park marchers appeared on the bridge to join forces with the hundreds of other anti-Trump protesters already at the Convention Center!” [Read more…]

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Trump’s Win Could Be an Artifact of the Voting System

Not many people give much thought to the dynamics of the voting system. We just accept that you vote for one guy or the other and everybody gets one vote and the person who gets the most votes wins. This system, called plurality voting or first-past-the-post, seems obvious, but there are a myriad of other kinds of voting systems.

In the case of the Republican primary the single vote per voter with so many candidates almost guaranteed some sort of anomaly. A total of 17 candidates started off in the primary on March 23, 2015. As each state was ticked off, Trump garnered most of the votes; however, a majority of the voters voted for one of the other candidates.

The result was that Trump was reported as having “won” the state, especially if it was a winner-take-all state. As Trump won, his momentum built up and before too long, his winning the primary seemed inevitable. Even after all but Cruz and Kasich had dropped out, Cruz and Kasich were splitting the anti-Trump vote. [Read more…]